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First loves don’t last. Especially one as unlikely and turbulent as Elodie and Caspian’s.
It’s been years since she’s seen the rough rebel she fell in love with as a teen. She’s put him behind her and moved on. That’s the story she tries to sell her friends and family, but deep down, she knows it’s a lie. She hasn’t moved on from Caspian Cruz and she probably never will, but she has to finally give up hope they’ll ever reunite.
Or does she?
When her friends drag her to a sold-out rock concert, she comes face to face with the lead singer . . . who just so happens to be the boy she fell for all those years ago.
She never thought she’d see him again. She never realized he’d made it in the music world. And she never expected him to confess that he’s been waiting for her as long as she’s been waiting for him.
What will happen when their worlds collide again? A repeat of the past or a second chance to get things right?
ROCK HARD is a short and sexy read, chock-full of excessive sweetness and heaps of filthy talking. Not for the faint or square of heart.
My music was an extension of my soul—the tone of it a reflection of my mood. But the heart of it was him. It always had been, and I guessed it always would be.
I was playing to a sold-out audience at one of the large theaters in Los Angeles, but at the last minute, I had changed my line-up of songs for the night. Instead of the softer fare of nocturnes and lullabies I’d planned on, I’d exchanged Chopin’s and Mozart’s most eloquent pieces for Tchaikovsky’s and Beethoven’s most heartbreaking composures. I couldn’t play light songs when my heart felt heavy. I couldn’t give the audience beautiful pieces when my world felt forlorn.
I couldn’t play his song to an audience who wouldn’t understand.
The last few haunting chords of Medtner’s “Night Wind Sonata” were echoing through the auditorium when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Chills spilled down my spine, puddling in my feet as I focused on hitting the last notes.
The crowd’s applause exploded through the room as the final note reverberated around me. Usually I slid from the bench a few moments later, took a bow, and whisked off the stage. Tonight I felt glued to the bench, my fingers stuck to the keys.
That strange sensation abated just enough so that I could move again, though just barely. Pulling my shaking hands off of the keys, I forced myself to rise from the bench. The audience was still applauding, starting to rise to their feet as I attempted the same.
I’d been playing to crowds since I was six—I’d been performing to sold-out crowds around the country for the past few years—but never had I felt like this before. Trying to collect myself as I moved to the front of the stage, I concentrated on holding my composure when I’d never felt less composed. Shaking hands, wobbly legs, pit in my stomach, shivers down my spine . . . I’d experienced this kind of sensation before, but never in this kind of context.
I’d felt it the first time I looked at him and he looked back. The first time he’d reached for my hand and tied his fingers through mine. The first time he’d kissed me, that time after piano practice. I’d felt it a million other times, but I’d only felt it with him.
As I took my bow—the pitch of the applause increasing as I did so—I just noticed a figure drifting out of one of the rows and moving up the aisle toward the back of the theatre. It was a man’s frame moving in an achingly familiar way.
By the time I’d lifted out of my bow to see the crowd again, he was gone. A conjuring of my imagination. The ghost that followed me wherever I went.
As I left the stage, I reminded myself he was gone.
Rock Hard was the sweetest, most heart warming rock star/musician romance I’ve EVER read!!!
True, this is a genre a don’t venture very often given my personal pet peeves, and specially the renown and usual groupie drama attached to the trope, but this sugary sweet smutty story had nothing of those!
What it did have was one smoking HOT, swoon-worthy hero, Caspian! Sigh…
Caspian and Elodie have been in love with one another since they were teenagers, so when after two years of dating they were broken apart by her parents, and Elodie thought she had lost her heart forever.
Caspian. The first boy I’d ever loved. The only one I ever really had. The one who had promised me forever, only to make me realize forever was for storybook people, not real ones.
What she didn’t know was that her life was indeed storybook like, because not once, not even for a minute, did Caspian let go of her, and time and space meant nothing because she was always on his mind. She was is lifeline, his everything…
“You,” he whispered with conviction, his steps echoing around me as he moved closer. “All I want is you.”
Eight years passed, and just when she least thought possible, her life and heart rebooted, because right in from of her, as a rock star in a crowed concert was her First Love, Caspian Cruz.
“So I made a promise to myself to not approach you until I’d made something of myself. Until I’d become a man worthy of a person as beautiful and talented and perfect as you are. Until I made myself worthy of your love.”
“Caspian Cruz.” I lifted my head from his chest and looked into his eyes. “You have always been worthy of me and my love.”
Of course that very fast all the misconceptions were cleared and they fast realized that they were still just as much in love and devoted to one another now as they were eight years prior.
Caspian had always been like a drug to me, an addiction I could never recover from, even after almost a decade of being sober. He swam in my veins. He stirred my very being.
“Because I might want every part of you there is to have, angel, but right now, only one part is on my mind—the one part of you I’ve never had. I want to have it so I can know I’ve had every part of you. So I can say I’ve loved every part of you.”
Actually, if anything, their love shone even brighter now, because their repressed sexual craving (LOL) took it a whole new level, now that they were adults!
Caspian was already the perfect romance hero, with his immeasurable devotion to Elodie, but that extra dirty mouthed talk of his… Lordy… Not even Elodie was prepared – not that she was angelic in between the sheets – specially considering their equal inexperience on that regard.
“No, this isn’t making love wet. This is hard, rough fucking wet, sweet angel.” His mouth lowered to my ear, nipping at my lobe. “Is that what you want? Is that how you want me to take you?”
I sure as hell loved every second of it! And it more than guaranteed Caspian a place on my best book boyfriend list – and the main reason for my five star rating -, because equal parts sweet, devoted, loving and panty-melting is something we don’t see in romance these days. And that is exactly what Kat Austen gave us, once again, in the most perfect and unusual – least for me, at least – of settings. I can’t wait for her next super sweet, sizzling hot, smutty read! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
“After all of this time, after everything, do you still want me? Do you still want a forever with me?”
I wasn’t crying. Sobbing was a more accurate word. “I want forever and then some with you, Caspian Cruz.”Every part of me loved every part of him. Every piece of me belonged with every piece of him. I was meant to share my life with him, and he was made to share his life with me.
ARC kindly provided by the author via ArdentProse in exchange
for an honest review
Kat Austen is the secret pen name of a New York Times and USATODAY bestselling author. Kat writes short and steamy reads that leave hearts (and other parts) satisfied.
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